drug antidotes ... and my plan

[RTP]

Hej

so I've been having the thought that I am - naturally, rooted in my psychic condition - constantly 'on the same "level" as some other people when they have taken a reaonsble amount of cannabis'.
It's nothing new, I have been thinking this for several years already. Maybe you can even find a post where I said it, but I may not have expressed it a whole lot to the level that I want to make a thread about it.

But now is the time ... because I wanna know what's what - and because I have an idea.

First: Can this even be true? Of course I don't have a "stash" in my body that's constantly giving off THC, that woud be a dream for some of you, would it? I mean, that I might have higher dopamine levels (say dopamine for starters, I don't know which substances in the brain are also affected by cannabis) than the average person ... levels that the others only get to when they smoke a reasonable amount.
And when I smoke, the dopamine gets too high for me quickly ... explaining why I can't personally take much of that substance (I really can't, sad but true).

Heck, maybe it's even TOO HIGH when I'm sober already. Which brings me to:

Second: If I took a medication that decreased the dopamine, would it help me get "normal" / "sober" ... whatever you call it? 
Coincidentally, these medications are named antipsychotics. Uh oh.

But seriously. Is it advisable to be experimenting in this direction? What do you think? Anybody has taken these medications already? What do they do? Is it advisable only to reduce the dopamine or which other substances should be reduced?
And what if it is not the level of the substance but the way I react to it ... maybe my body can harvest LOADS of "reaction material" from a relatively little amount of dopamine (the dopamine shall be my example), which is why even tiny increases such as a little bit of cannabis have profound effects. How to change the way I react to it ... are there possibilities? Can I make myself more "immune" to it?

I'm looking forward to hear your thoughts about this...

[Monumental]

Yes, I think it can be true. Key for understanding this phenomenon is acceptance human as the unique combo of unsteady psycho and physiological systems. So, why not? For some humans it is looks like form of blessing, and they even do not require any external stimulators, they have good feelings by nature himself. It is high level sensual empathy. Maybe better do not fight with ourselves, but try to focus their possibilities on something what you love

[Padmapani]

newer research shows that dopamine is (when looking at what it does to the psyche; otherwise we're very clear how it is important for movement and why parkinson's disease has the symptoms it has) mainly responsible for motivation.

if a substance releases dopamine, it's not necessarily pleasurable but rather something you'll be motivated to repeat. if you're low on dopamine, or on an antipsychotic drug, you won't find motivation and energy to get your ass up and do something. parkinson's patients who take dopamine agonists to make up for the dopamin lost by the disease, can sometimes get uncontrollable urges — some may start a gambling career, others may pursue inappropriate sexual relations.

but i know it's not about dopamine. your body produces it's own substances that bind to cannabinoid receptors in the brain. of course there might be individual differences in how  sensitive the receptors are or how fast anandamide (the endogenous cannabinoid) is degraded after use, but your brain has gotten used to how it functions for your whole life. it has set a sort of level it considers normal and will try to regulate accordingly if you add substances to throw it off balance. if you're on opioids (or any other addictive drug) all the time you will need them to just feel normal.

there are substances that block your cannabinoid receptors, and they are very effective at for losing weight, but they were withdrawn from the market because of the side effects. the prototypical anti-cannabinoid, rimonabant, can cause depression (in at least 10% of the people; 1% of the people who take it even ponder suicide), insomnia, anxiety, nausea, flu-like symptoms, spasms and seizures. it's really not something you'd want to take.

also, you can only speculate why you compare your normal state to that of someone else on cannabis. there are hundreds of reasons and we do not yet have the technology to identify the true cause (in most cases) and much less the medicines to counteract the imbalance. the brain is extremely complicated and we're still lighyears away from understanding how it really works. even for "simple" diseases that don't involve the brain, and that are well understood for decades (such as cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy or infections with rabies or even herpes) cannot be treated adequately. with the tools we have at hand right now, psychiatry is like trying to put out a fire by either hitting it with a hammer or a wooden stick.

so in short: no, it's not advisable to experiment in this direction.

there is a possibility to make yourself less susceptible to the effects of cannabis. if you smoke a lot you'll get a tolerance. but i doubt that's effective at what you really want to achieve.

[RTP]

hey thanks for the posts ... I have thought about it and I agree - it may not be the right way to tackle my problem if I tried these medications without thorough medical supervision...

On some other (german) forum somebody else had this plan too and the people there really advised him not to do that.

Guess I'll just stick with my rule number 1, which is: to keep a benzo in the house because "a benzo should end every bad trip" ... no matter if induced by lsd, cannabis - or my body's own mind.

Do benzos go bad? I think the ones I got are past expiry for more than two years already -- shows you how often I need them 

[technosomy]

i use to do weed years ago, and have it with a south african succulent called sceletium or kanna
takes the edge off cannabis real quick,

tried it with people who couldn't smoke it for that reason every time they loved it

is an amazing plant you all should check it out, once apon a time it used to be used as currency (you make your mind up how special it is)

grows like a weed

[Padmapani]

On 9 October 2018 at 12:45 AM, RTP said:

to keep a benzo in the house

exactly. i always have a benzo ready but haven't used one in many years. the most important effect of benzos is that if you know you have a safety net to fall back on, you can relax and don't need to actually use it.

[Penzoline]

Well psychotic behaviour is often linked to too much dopamine. I knew a person who basically saw colors when they closed their eyes and reacted really strongly to just about everything around them. When they did go on medication it destroyed their overwhelming creativity, which of course caused stopping said medication. There's always a tradeoff. If it's not a problem for you then whatever. Anti-psychotics can have their side-effects as well so take that into consideration.

Edit: Padmapani apparently already said most of that.

[RTP]

Hey, I sometimes see colors too when I close my eyes. I think it's linked to migraine...
Although sometimes annoying, it can be a nice combination with goatrance.

 

On 10/14/2018 at 6:15 AM, Padmapani said:

exactly. i always have a benzo ready but haven't used one in many years. the most important effect of benzos is that if you know you have a safety net to fall back on, you can relax and don't need to actually use it.

Yeah, I fortunately almost never have to use them. But I wonder ... do they go bad? The ones I have ran off in 2016 ... expiry date wise.

One more idea I do have though - and that one might be something. How about homeopathy? I mean, the basic scheme of it (before it comes to these "micropotents" and half-esoteric stuff that I don't know what to make of) is: to counter a disease with a drug that does not prevent, but that triggers it. The person takes mico and nano-doses of a poison that triggers the symptoms he tries to beat. Then, in the long term, the body will adapt to the microdose and "gets used to it". If you then stop taking these microdoses, the sickness will be "healed" because the mechanisms to counter the bad effects will still be active in the body. Sounds like a creative move, doesn't it?
I'm sure you can get homeopathic doses of cannabis and LSD on the free market... [edit: I mean, you can get them 100% legal and legit]

Anybody with more experience around who can tell me if that deduction of mine is right or if it's completely wrong and I might damage myself?

[Padmapani]

2 hours ago, RTP said:

Hey, I sometimes see colors too when I close my eyes. I think it's linked to migraine...
Although sometimes annoying, it can be a nice combination with goatrance.

 

Yeah, I fortunately almost never have to use them. But I wonder ... do they go bad? The ones I have ran off in 2016 ... expiry date wise.

One more idea I do have though - and that one might be something. How about homeopathy? I mean, the basic scheme of it (before it comes to these "micropotents" and half-esoteric stuff that I don't know what to make of) is: to counter a disease with a drug that does not prevent, but that triggers it. The person takes mico and nano-doses of a poison that triggers the symptoms he tries to beat. Then, in the long term, the body will adapt to the microdose and "gets used to it". If you then stop taking these microdoses, the sickness will be "healed" because the mechanisms to counter the bad effects will still be active in the body. Sounds like a creative move, doesn't it?
I'm sure you can get homeopathic doses of cannabis and LSD on the free market... [edit: I mean, you can get them 100% legal and legit]

Anybody with more experience around who can tell me if that deduction of mine is right or if it's completely wrong and I might damage myself?

the expiry date gives you an estimate when there will be a guaranteed 90% of the active ingredient left in the tablet (if they aren't exposed to excessive light or heat). some medicines will generate less pleasant degradation products (if you like your stomach don't take expired aspirin), others like benzos should in theory simply get less effective (if they're not extremely old).

for some drugs (amphetmine and probably mdma, and who knows what else) there will actually be a sensitisation at low doses (not homeopathic doses). so you'd actually be even more susceptible to the effects, which is the opposite of what you're looking for (with salvinorin even regular doses lead to sensitisation).

homeopathy has been disproven time and time again. every good study shows it to be equal with placebo. placebo can be a powerful tool sometimes, and a good way to treat minor illnesses with minimal side effects in willing people. but in all honesty, the body does not detect homeopathic doses because in the highly diluted (=strong according to homeopathy) dilutions there is not a single molecule left to do anything. we have no way, neither advanced analytical instruments nor people taking it as a medicine, to distinguish one homeopathic "medicine" from the other — or from simple sugar pellets.

Anybody with more experience around who can tell me if that deduction of mine is right or if it's completely wrong and I might damage myself?

as long as you take higher potencies than D6 or C3 (with very few exceptions like the ultra-potent botulinum toxin) you cannot harm yourself using homeopathy.

[RTP]

Thanks for the clarification ofthe run off drugs. So these should not do any harm ... less effective maybe, but that's not the end of the world.

And sorry, I did in fact _not_ mean homeopathy up there.

The statement that "similar cures similar" (german: "Ähnliches mit Ähnlichem heilen") has not been established by homeopathy, but by Paracelsus, who's quite a famous guy concerning the foundation of medicine as far as I know.

More specific:

Quote

Paracelsus and his followers espoused the position that like cures like; that is, “a poison in the body would be cured by a similar poison,” (principle of similitude) but the dosage is very important.” 

(from https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/53/1/2/1673334 )

I found this out because I talked to a friend. 
That statement is popular in the homeopathic community too, which is why I confused it. I did not mean to take substances that don't contain any molecules due to their high dilution...

The correct term in my opinion for what I meant was probably microdosing -- but also not in the sense in which it is talked about out there...

____

However, thanks for the info that this micro-dosing (or whatever my idea is called) actually might increase sensitivity ... that would be the exact opposite to what I intend.
Also I read up on it more and it says that cannabis tolerance may re-set "quite quickly" within few days ... that would be totally against my goals - working on micro doses for the purpose to build tolerance and then having it all pop back to normal within few days having to begin the painstaking process once again...

But are there any other methods to lower dopamine? A website suggested to take St. John's Wort, because it increases serotonin, which in turn will lower the dopamine. However, I am skeptical. I have tried St. John's Wort already several years ago (for a few months) and it was doing me good, but once I decided to leave it, I promptly got some panic attacks ... really bad stuff ... don't need that another time.
I want it in the exact opposite direction and with maybe, a slower ascent to the "peak tolerance" that my brain adapts so slowly that it won't trigger panic "on the way up", so to say.

[Padmapani]

2 hours ago, RTP said:

 

 

But are there any other methods to lower dopamine? A website suggested to take St. John's Wort, because it increases serotonin, which in turn will lower the dopamine. However, I am skeptical. I have tried St. John's Wort already several years ago (for a few months) and it was doing me good, but once I decided to leave it, I promptly got some panic attacks ... really bad stuff ... don't need that another time.
I want it in the exact opposite direction and with maybe, a slower ascent to the "peak tolerance" that my brain adapts so slowly that it won't trigger panic "on the way up", so to say.

paracelsus also liked to "treat" people with hefty doses mercury. and unsurprisingly, he died of mercury poisoning. he was also a proponent of the completely ludicrous "signaturenlehre" (if a plant looks like an organ, it's god's hint for us to use it against diseases of the organ). he also did advance medicine at his time (before the scientific method), but thankfully we now have a few more hundred years of medical trial and error to look back on now.

taking st. john's wort regularly does increase your serotonin receptor density (of subtype 2, which is also what psychedelics bind to). some subtypes of these receptors are also anxiogenic (if overactive you can get nervous/panic attacks). so while i have never heard of panic attacks from st. john's wort before it's not too surprising. but the exact mechanisms of st. john's wort and why it helps against depression is still not fully clear.

raising serotonin lowers dopamine? that's so simplistic that it's most likely completely false. however if you have a good reference i'd like to see it. but generally, stimulating serotonin release by a specific population of neurons will affect different populations of other neurons differently. some might release more dopamine, other will release less dopamine, others will release less acetylchole, or more gaba, ...
the brain in insanely complicated and even if we had the tools to stimulate brain regions accurately enough to study the thing in detail we still don't have the tools to measure the effects precisely enough to make any sense of it. any simplistic hypothesis that includes "too little serotonin" (for depression) or "too much dopamine" (for psychosis) or whatnot has been proven to be false. they are just repeated by the media and even doctors because they are easy to explain and we haven't come up with something that's a lot better yet. "it will make you feel better because it raises serotonin" sounds better than "we have no idea why it works for some but a third of the people getting this drug will feel better eventually".

[technosomy]

as for seretonin like i said kanna does it easy, long term tryptophan, easy solution, works to well

[RTP]

Okay, I didn't know much about Paracelsus or about his more questionable methods ... I just wanted to say, the guy was quite famous and he propagated this method, which makes sense to me.

On 10/17/2018 at 1:40 AM, Padmapani said:

taking st. john's wort regularly does increase your serotonin receptor density (of subtype 2, which is also what psychedelics bind to). some subtypes of these receptors are also anxiogenic (if overactive you can get nervous/panic attacks). so while i have never heard of panic attacks from st. john's wort before it's not too surprising. but the exact mechanisms of st. john's wort and why it helps against depression is still not fully clear.

That sounds really interesting ... I wonder, why do you know so much about it, did you study this? Just curious...

The "raising serotonine lowers dopamine" statement was from a questionable source, I'm skeptical about it, as said.

On 10/17/2018 at 2:38 AM, technosomy said:

as for seretonin like i said kanna does it easy, long term tryptophan, easy solution, works to well

But the Kanna could be an idea that seems interesting to me. Apparently it can be smoked or also sniffed (which I would prefer) ... I'll certainly keep it in mind.

[technosomy]

yeah it really works, i have a garden of it here, takes months to dry properley, grows like a weed!
i only chew it now and again, when i bit stressed out or anxious,

On 10/19/2018 at 7:11 AM, RTP said:

Okay, I didn't know much about Paracelsus or about his more questionable methods ... I just wanted to say, the guy was quite famous and he propagated this method, which makes sense to me.

That sounds really interesting ... I wonder, why do you know so much about it, did you study this? Just curious...

The "raising serotonine lowers dopamine" statement was from a questionable source, I'm skeptical about it, as said.

But the Kanna could be an idea that seems interesting to me. Apparently it can be smoked or also sniffed (which I would prefer) ... I'll certainly keep it in mind.

 

[Padmapani]

On 18 October 2018 at 10:11 PM, RTP said:

That sounds really interesting ... I wonder, why do you know so much about it, did you study this? Just curious...

i did study this, but any substance that affects the brain is especially interesting so i try to keep up with the scientific literature, even when the job demands just the most basic understanding.